This article is from page 83 of the 2009-07-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 83 JPG
CLONLARAY’S season continued on an upward trend on Thursday when they held off fellow promotion rivals Eire Og to top the division and more importantly, qualify for the last four of the Clare Cup for the second suc- cessive year.
This latest victory was made all the more impressive by the fact that they had to do it without key players such as Nicky O’Connell, John Conlon and Donal Madden for this winner- takes-all clash that also came only twenty four hours after five of their players had played in the Munster
Under 21 championship semi-final against Limerick.
One of that contingent, Darach Ho- nan, was outstanding for the county on Wednesday and continued his rich vein of form here by scoring the two goals that eventually sunk a stubborn Eire Og side.
Clonlara raced into an early lead, with Honan’s goal pushing them 1-6 to 0-1 clear by the turn of the open- ing quarter but credit Eire Og for not dropping their heads as they fought back with the aid of a Damien Mc- Mahon goal to only trail by two at the break at 1-8 to 1-6.
SU et Tae oy liu tie K elem ONO ERE ILS restart but this time Eire Og actu- ally took a slender lead with only ten minutes remaining. However, the home side who had built up a 16 match unbeaten run before this tie, were not about to let the defence of their title falter at this late stage and duly responded with Honan grabbing 1-1 in a late flurry to send them into the last four and subject Eire Og to a promotion play-off with Whitegate.